Chapter 8.—God Alone Creates
Those Things Which are Changed by Magic Art.

13. Yet it is not on this account
to be thought that the matter of visible things is subservient to
the bidding of those wicked angels; but rather to that of God, by
whom this power is given, just so far as He, who is unchangeable,
determines in His lofty and spiritual abode to give it. For water
and fire and earth are subservient even to wicked men, who are
condemned to the mines, in order that they may do therewith what
they will, but only so far as is permitted. Nor, in truth, are
those evil angels to be called creators, because by their means the
magicians, withstanding the servant of God, made frogs and
serpents; for it was not they who created them. But, in truth, some
hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly,
are concealed in the corporeal elements of this world. For those
seeds that are visible now to our eyes from fruits and living
things, are quite distinct from the hidden seeds of those former
seeds; from which, at the bidding of the Creator, the water
produced the first swimming creatures and fowl, and the earth the
first buds after their kind, and the first living creatures after
their kind.382382Gen. i. 20–25 For neither
at that time were those seeds so drawn forth into products of their
several kinds, as that the power of production was exhausted in
those products; but oftentimes, suitable combinations of
circumstances are wanting, whereby they may be enabled to burst
forth and complete their species. For, consider, the very least
shoot is a seed; for, if fitly consigned to the earth, it produces
a tree. But of this shoot there is a yet more subtle seed in some
grain of the same species, and this is visible even to us. But of
this grain also there is further still a seed, which, although we
are unable to see it with our eyes, yet we can conjecture its
existence from our reason; because, except there were some such
power in those elements, there would not so frequently be produced
from the earth things which had not been sown there; nor
61yet so
many animals, without any previous commixture of male and female;
whether on the land, or in the water, which yet grow, and by
commingling bring forth others, while themselves sprang up without
any union of parents. And certainly bees do not conceive the seeds
of their young by commixture, but gather them as they lie scattered
over the earth with their mouth.383383 [Augustin is not alone in his
belief that the bee is an exception to the dictum; omne animal
ex ovo. As late as 1744, Thorley, an English “scientist,”
said that “the manner in which bees propagate their species is
entirely hid from the eyes of all men; and the most strict,
diligent, and curious observers and inquisitors have not been able
to discover it. It is a secret, and will remain a mystery. Dr.
Butler says that they do not copulate as other living creatures
do.” (Thorley: Melisselogia. Section viii.) The observations of
Huber and others have disproved this opinion. Some infer that
ignorance of physics proves ignorance of philosophy and theology.
The difference between matter and mind is so great, that erroneous
opinions in one province are compatible with correct ones in the
other. It does not follow that because Augustin had wrong notions
about bees, and no knowledge at all of the steam engine and
telegraph, his knowledge of God and the soul was inferior to that
of a modern materialist.—W.G.T.S.] For the Creator of these invisible
seeds is the Creator of all things Himself; since whatever comes
forth to our sight by being born, receives the first beginnings of
its course from hidden seeds, and takes the successive increments
of its proper size and its distinctive forms from these as it were
original rules. As therefore we do not call parents the creators of
men, nor farmers the creators of corn,—although it is by the
outward application of their actions that the power384384 [The English translator renders
“virtus” in its secondary sense of “goodness.”
Augustin employs it here, in its primary sense of “energy,”
“force.”—W.G.T.S.] of God
operates within for the creating these things;—so it is not right
to think not only the bad but even the good angels to be creators,
if, through the subtilty of their perception and body, they know
the seeds of things which to us are more hidden, and scatter them
secretly through fit temperings of the elements, and so furnish
opportunities of producing things, and of accelerating their
increase. But neither do the good angels do these things, except as
far as God commands, nor do the evil ones do them wrongfully,
except as far as He righteously permits. For the malignity of the
wicked one makes his own will wrongful; but the power to do so, he
receives rightfully, whether for his own punishment, or, in the
case of others, for the punishment of the wicked, or for the praise
of the good.

14. Accordingly, the Apostle Paul,
distinguishing God’s creating and forming within, from the
operations of the creature which are applied from without, and
drawing a similitude from agriculture, says, “I planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase.”3853851 Cor. iii. 6 As, therefore, in the case of
spiritual life itself, no one except God can work righteousness in
our minds, yet men also are able to preach the gospel as an outward
means, not only the good in sincerity, but also the evil in
pretence;386386Phil. i. 18 so in the
creation of visible things it is God that works from within; but
the exterior operations, whether of good or bad, of angels or men,
or even of any kind of animal, according to His own absolute power,
and to the distribution of faculties, and the several appetites for
things pleasant, which He Himself has imparted, are applied by Him
to that nature of things wherein He creates all things, in like
manner as agriculture is to the soil. Wherefore I can no more call
the bad angels, evoked by magic arts, the creators of the frogs and
serpents, than I can say that bad men were creators of the corn
crop, which I see to have sprung up through their labor.

15. Just as Jacob, again, was not
the creator of the colors in the flocks, because he placed the
various colored rods for the several mothers, as they drank, to
look at in conceiving.387387Gen. xxx. 41 Yet neither were the cattle
themselves creators of the variety of their own offspring, because
the variegated image, impressed through their eyes by the sight of
the varied rods, clave to their soul, but could affect the body
that was animated by the spirit thus affected only through sympathy
with this commingling, so far as to stain with color the tender
beginnings of their offspring. For that they are so affected from
themselves, whether the soul from the body, or the body from the
soul, arises in truth from suitable reasons, which immutably exist
in that highest wisdom of God Himself, which no extent of place
contains; and which, while it is itself unchangeable, yet quits not
one even of those things which are changeable, because there is not
one of them that is not created by itself. For it was the
unchangeable and invisible reason of the wisdom of God, by which
all things are created, which caused not rods, but cattle, to be
born from cattle; but that the color of the cattle conceived should
be in any degree influenced by the variety of the rods, came to
pass through the soul of the pregnant cattle being affected through
their eyes from without, and so according to its own measure
drawing inwardly within itself the rule of formation, which it
received from the innermost power of its own Creator. How great,
however, may be the power of the soul in affecting and changing
corporeal substance (although certainly it cannot be called the
creator of the body, because every cause of changeable and sensible
substance, and all its 62measure and number and weight,
by which are brought to pass both its being at all and its being of
such and such a nature, arise from the intelligible and
unchangeable life, which is above all things, and which reaches
even to the most distant and earthly things), is a very copious
subject, and one not now necessary. But I thought the act of Jacob
about the cattle should be noticed, for this reason, viz. in
order that it might be perceived that, if the man who thus placed
those rods cannot be called the creator of the colors in the lambs
and kids; nor yet even the souls themselves of the mothers, which
colored the seeds conceived in the flesh by the image of variegated
color, conceived through the eyes of the body, so far as nature
permitted it; much less can it be said that the creators of the
frogs and serpents were the bad angels, through whom the magicians
of Pharaoh then made them.

383 [Augustin is not alone in his
belief that the bee is an exception to the dictum; omne animal
ex ovo. As late as 1744, Thorley, an English “scientist,”
said that “the manner in which bees propagate their species is
entirely hid from the eyes of all men; and the most strict,
diligent, and curious observers and inquisitors have not been able
to discover it. It is a secret, and will remain a mystery. Dr.
Butler says that they do not copulate as other living creatures
do.” (Thorley: Melisselogia. Section viii.) The observations of
Huber and others have disproved this opinion. Some infer that
ignorance of physics proves ignorance of philosophy and theology.
The difference between matter and mind is so great, that erroneous
opinions in one province are compatible with correct ones in the
other. It does not follow that because Augustin had wrong notions
about bees, and no knowledge at all of the steam engine and
telegraph, his knowledge of God and the soul was inferior to that
of a modern materialist.—W.G.T.S.]

384 [The English translator renders
“virtus” in its secondary sense of “goodness.”
Augustin employs it here, in its primary sense of “energy,”
“force.”—W.G.T.S.]